jeannie and i are at laguardia, in nyc, about to head back to detroit to collect our offspring and (tomorrow) fly home to san diego.

what a great five days! our hotel was steps (literally) from times square, which was such a cool location for our first trip here. highlights:

– an afternoon at moma (museum of modern art). i love modern art, and it was very cool to see van gogh’s starry night, works by jasper johns and picasso, monet water lillies, a special exhibit by pop-artist elizabeth murray.

– walking through times square with HUGE snowflakes falling (our 10 minutes of bad weather on this trip, which turned out to be fun) at about 5pm on new year’s eve. we didn’t stand out there for the ball dropping thing — there’s a surprising amount of control; we wouldn’t have been able to come and go from our hotel, but would have had to stand in one area the whole time.

– amazing meals all over the city, but our most fun hightlights were: the bar room at moma (ht to bob carlton on that one), crepes on columbia (a little hole-in-the-wall crepe restaurant on the upper west side, near the cathedral of st john the divine), and caffe napoli in little italy (we’d wandered through chinatown, up into little italy, and just chose a restaurant at random, but we chose well).

– visiting cbgb’s in the east village. american birthplace of punk. very, very cool — and a total dive!

– we saw two sets of friends (two couples). one had a friend who is a former junior higher from one of my churches forty or fifty years ago got a hook-up with a friend who’s a private helicopter pilot (for some rich guys), and he took us on a private helicopter tour around manhattan at about 7pm on new year’s eve. pretty amazing! spent news year’s eve with our good friends george and cris baum (george of lost and found fame). they’d recently moved their family to the chelsea neighborhood in manhatten for george to attend seminary.

[[continued the next day…]]
we’re in detroit now…

– an afternoon at “the cloisters” (the met’s extension up on the northern tip of the island), a collection of medievil and gothic architecture and art. beautiful place.

– one broadway musical and one off-broadway play: dirty rotten scoundrels, starring john lithgow, was absolutely hilarious. really, we laughed out loud through the whole thing. then we got half-price tix to see dog sees god, an unauthorized story of the peanuts characters as older teens. lots of laughs, but a very heavy story-line overall. interesting.

that’s about it! like i said, it woulda been tough to have a better four-night trip to nyc. now, back to the land of semi-normal living!